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2014-10-10 Home Front: Politix

CDC Chief: Why I don't support a travel ban

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Posted by CrazyFool 2014-10-10 10:17|| || Front Page|| [11130 views ] Top

#1 When a wildfire breaks out we don't fence it off.

Obviously he doesn't know a damn thing about 'fire breaks,' the poor, helpless sycophant bastid.

Posted by Besoeker 2014-10-10 11:02|| 2014-10-10 11:02|| Front Page Top

#2 Because the hand in my sock puppet self told me no. Now I'm going to go hide in level 4 containment. Plus I've got all the Racal suits I can ever need.

Posted by ed in texas 2014-10-10 11:08|| 2014-10-10 11:08|| Front Page Top

#3 IIRC, the Iron Curtain was quite effective.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2014-10-10 11:22|| 2014-10-10 11:22|| Front Page Top

#4 This 'political hack' was Mayor Bloomburgs front man for curtailing the use and increasing the cost of cigarette smoking in NYC. His pronouncements on no travel bans are as phoney as he is.

Posted by Mugsy Glink 2014-10-10 11:23|| 2014-10-10 11:23|| Front Page Top

#5 B @ #1 beat me to it; that is exactly what I thought when I saw it earlier. This guy has to be as stupid as Bambi.
Where are the adults???

Posted by USN, Ret. 2014-10-10 13:41|| 2014-10-10 13:41|| Front Page Top

#6 Precisely why I posted this. I couldn't believe he said such a stupid statement.

I also noted the option of simply allowing the fire to 'burn itself out' - which would be a very drastic, but possibly necessary, action if things get too far out of control. I think we are far from that point.

Posted by CrazyFool 2014-10-10 14:01|| 2014-10-10 14:01|| Front Page Top

#7 It’s simply not feasible to build a wall – virtual or real – around a community, city, or country.

Can't talk about the history of civilization without talking about the use of the wall.

When a wildfire breaks out we don't fence it off. We go in to extinguish it before one of the random sparks sets off another outbreak somewhere else.

Bull. Shit.
You get in front of the head of the fire, and start putting down water and getting rid of fuel. Thus, making a wall.

What you do not do is go into the wildfire, then you are in the fire, smoke, and spending resources on an area already lost.

Its the sort of lazy, imprecise analogy I would expect someone to come up with while sitting on the toilet the day after downing four hot links.

Posted by swksvolFF 2014-10-10 14:16|| 2014-10-10 14:16|| Front Page Top

#8 Righteous fisking CF. I agree we're a long way from fencing it off and letting it burn itself out. However, that is the primary mechanism by which previous Ebola outbreaks in remote villages have ended.

The firebreak thing jumped out at me too. Ironically, "fencing it off" was exactly the approach used to stamp out smallpox: ring vaccinations. An infected patient's contacts were traced and inoculated, and the process repeated for each new infection, until there were no new infections.

Of course, there is no Ebola vaccine (yet), which makes a multi-layered defense even more critical. While this model shows that an 80% air travel reduction would only delay the spread by 3-4 weeks, IMO, that isn't a good reason to discard the idea altogether.

It's disgusting and terrifying to see public health being sacrificed to political correctness.

Posted by RandomJD 2014-10-10 14:31|| 2014-10-10 14:31|| Front Page Top

#9 RandomJD, Vespignani (one of the authors of the paper you linked) did earlier work on the spread of H1N1, that work accurately predicting the how the virus spread days before the CDC's data. He is one of the the group that developed the complex adaptive networked systems model. This
Wired article talks a bit about how that model developed, though nothing about its applicability to disease spread.

Posted by trailing wife 2014-10-10 16:58|| 2014-10-10 16:58|| Front Page Top

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